Kate's Cafe & Restaurant

"Entering Kate’s Cafe in Plaistow immediately feels like you’ve walked into an aunty’s or family friend’s dining room where everyone knows each other. The space does away with unnecessary decor and keeps it simple. Which is more reason why it just feels like popping over to a familiar kitchen and makes it perfect for a group catch-up. The dishes are a deep dive into Ghanaian cuisine. Grilled fish is served with swallows like omo tuo, pounded yam, banku, and kenkey. Make sure Ghanaian stews like the incredibly rich, peanut-based nkatenkwan and abenkwan are on your table, plus rich, tomato-based red red. All bites come with plantain or yam, and if you can’t choose, get both." - Riaz Phillips

"Entering Kate’s Cafe in Plaistow immediately feels like you’ve walked into an aunty’s or family friend’s dining room. The space does away with unnecessary decor and keeps it simple. Which is more reason why it just feels like popping over to a familiar kitchen and makes it perfect for a group catch-up. The dishes are a deep dive into Ghanaian cuisine. Grilled fish is served with swallows like omo tuo, pounded yam, banku, and kenkey. Make sure Ghanaian stews like the incredibly rich, peanut-based nkatenkwan and abenkwan are on your table, plus rich, tomato-based red red. All bites come with plantain or yam, and if you can’t choose, get both." - Team Infatuation

"Entering Kate’s Cafe in Plaistow immediately feels like you’ve walked into an aunty’s or family friend’s dining room where everyone knows each other. The space does away with unnecessary decor and keeps it simple. Which is more reason why it just feels like popping over to a familiar kitchen and makes it perfect for a group catch-up. The dishes are a deep dive into Ghanaian cuisine. Grilled fish is served with swallows like omo tuo, pounded yam, banku, and kenkey. Make sure Ghanaian stews like the incredibly rich, peanut-based nkatenkwan and abenkwan are on your table, plus rich, tomato-based red red, a soft black-eyed bean stew. All bites come with plantain or yam, and if you can’t choose, get both. " - Riaz Phillips

"Kate Armah’s outstanding Ghanaian restaurant is made for portability as much as for dining in: A sharing platter that includes tsofi, chicken wings, kebabs, plantain, and more, is perfect for big meals at home. Other highlights include akonfem (guinea fowl), red red (fried plantain with black eye bean stew and gari foto), and any of the soups, which come served with either fufu, omutuo, banku, kenkey, kokonte, or rice." - Adam Coghlan, James Hansen

"The first stop for any West African musician playing down the road at Barking, or at least it would be if anyone was playing Barking right now. Kate Armah’s Plaistow restaurant is still iconic among the Ghanaian and wider African community — see its Instagram feed to find out if it’s John Boyega or Zendaya who has been enjoying the red red recently. Kate’s can be found by following sound — just listen for basslines and Sarkodie rapping quickly in Twi — or smell. Roasted akonfem — guinea fowls — or deep-fried tsofi, fatty turkey tails, are worthy companions for jollof rice. Those more at home with textural pleasure should go for the fried gizzards or the hausa koko, a sour, spicy millet porridge that is truly the breakfast of champions." - Jonathan Nunn